I have stopped teaching. I will continue to use this web log to share tools and resources. My former students are still welcome to post to this web log. If any new people want to join the web log and post entries or comments let me know and I will add you to the web log.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

(Hyvää Joulua => Merry Christmas! in finnish)Merry Christmas to all, it was a very nice course. I will remember all you guys with warm thoughts. Thanks to Steve for being a good teacher, it was a pleasure being there. And thanks for the good tip on buying the camera I was asking you about, we ended up getting the camera you recommended (the Canon SD800 with the wide angle lense). It had a lot of good reviews. Take care everybody!

Monday, December 18, 2006

Heading East One of the joys and challenges of photography is the empathy and imagination that you develop by being observant. I love wandering around, and as I wander I am surrounded by a thousand questions and a thousand feelings. Check the related links at the bottom of the post for more impressions.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

I added some last minute assignments for this class on my blog. You can check them out, including the pictures at http://crisby.vox.com/Thanks for the class, I learned a lot, and I'm having a lot more fun with my digital photos! Thanks everyone, Happy Holidays!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

This is the original photo that is about 12 years old. It has lost much of its brightness and luster. The boats name is Orphie. It is a 96 foot wooden ketch. I was part of the crew on the boat for 3 months. We chartered guests between St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands and St. Vincent and the Grenedine Islands, which is about a 450 mile one way trip. What a life that was. I sure miss the ocean and bright sunshine.

This is the revised photo. First I cropped the picture to remove the car. I used the magic wand to select the sky and applied a blue photo filter by adding an adjustment layer. I erased the cloud in the left portion of the picture as it was distracting. I then selected the water using the laso tool, added an adjustment layer and applied a photo filter. I selected the boat with the magic wand, applied an adjustment layer and adjusted the brightness and contrast of the hull of the boat. Finally I added one more adjustment layer and adjusted the levels, removed the dust and scratches and then sharpened the image.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

How to Buy a Digital Camera - A 9 Step GuideIf you are thinking about purchasing your first, second, third, or fourth digital camera this article is valuable. When your friends for family ask you questions about purchasing a camera send them this article.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

I post pictures on myspace.com for my family and friends to see. I enjoy using myspace because I can keep in touch with all my old friends that I went to school with at Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, AK. You can find my portfolio that I made at MEHS: http://www.mehs.educ.state.ak.us/portfolios/portfolio.html.

Well, I do have a portfolio, but unless you're a member of facebook - I haven't found a way that just 'anybody' can view my photos. If you are a member of www.facebook.com, just look for my name 'Travis Larsen' and from there you can view my albums and photos.

This is the proff.page for all Norwegian Photographer, and you can find some incredible pictures there with comments and everything - but as I said: it is in Norwegian. Talk to me and I can give a demonstration of the page.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

You can find my portfolio under http://www.dansku.net/galleryIt's from my trip to Anchorage on 23rd-24th November 2006. I took quite a few pictures from that trip and will be sharing them with my family and friends:) This a pre-taste of what they will look like.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

The pictures I chose capture 5 distinct feelings and bring back memories of places and moments in my life this past year. I have posted the pictures and comments about the picture on flickr. You can view them by clicking on the link below.http://www.flickr.com/photos/41754550@N00/

Today I leave for Florida then Jamaica, Grand Caymans, and Mexico. I hope to capture more memories of experiences that will impact my life and I believe this class has helped me to better understand how to capture these experiences.

I started with these two files, the other one over exposed to compensate the dark trees and the creek and the other one under exposed to compensate for the bright sky and the mountains. With curves and masks I adjusted the overall balance of the exposures.

Combining the two pictures resulted this one below.

I didn't stop there. To make the scene more picturesque, I continued with the editing, ending up with this, voila! This one would even make a postcard...

Monday, November 27, 2006

JPG Magazine: Issues: 7 I bought this magazine at Barnes and Noble. I liked it so much I subscribed. You can download the magazine as a PDF here, or you can scroll through the pages by scrolling through the Issue Preview. I enjoyed the photography, many of the photographs represented the kind of photography that I value.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Last year I was at Iceland. One day I was in the valley you can see to the left, but it was really foggy that day and I couldn't take any good pictures from the place. Instead I took a picture of a photo hanging on the wall. Because of bad light conditions in the room I needed to use flash. Taking photos like that never make good photos, but with some editing the picture look ok in my photoalbum from the trip.

This is the edited photo. In the iner circel from the flash was all information gone, and it had to be replaced, with new information. I used the cloning stamp to continue the lines in the mountains in to the destroyed part. The clone stamp and healing brush was also used to replace the other parts that was destroyed by the flash. Over the buildings I used layers to darken the buildings. I used different layers because it was different need of editing in different places of the picture. I made the roofs of the building ekstra dark to get more contrast on the picture. I also used layers, to make the colors better I adjusted the contrast. You can still see some of the damages from the flash, but i looks much better.

Here is my FLICKR account URL. This is a neat program to share photos with my friends and family. Some of my friends use RINGO, and the programs seem similar. I do like that this does not take up room on my computer. I also like that I can make it private or public. I look forward to trying this out a bit more.http://www.flickr.com/photos/47355067@N00/?saved=1

I have been organizing my personal and work photos by year and then by event, I did download Picasa and it went through all my pictures. I like my original system, other than I can tag a photo for the massive searches, i do like being able to tag for various things like fire or family. I played with the Picasa program and it has some nice features and maybe I am just stuck in some of my ways as to not like the new, but it was fun to try somrthing new and different, but as for know I think I will stick to my old stand-by.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

I used the clone stamp to take out the date and the red streak in the ice peice. I also used "text dance" by using the magnetic lasso tool and making a selection aroudn the ice peice. Then I made a work path under the path's menu.

This was my original photo - and for the edited version I used the auto contrast/color feature. Then I used the clone stamp on the dots out in the water (I found them distracting). I then selected all the water and mountains in the background and blurred them by 3% to get rid of the 'grainy' purple dots in the photo. Lastly I used the dodge/burn tool to highlight the sand on the shore. In the end I came out with this:

The Toy Polloy--Smells Fishy! I love the look of these photographs. I have been noticing, when scanning my old negatives, that I really like some of my odd and flawed photographs. I want to try some of these tools.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

This is my original photo. This was taken at arctic man this last year. As you can see the people are blurry, the camera was held at an angle so you can tell the picture is tilted.

Here I cleaned up the photo. I first adjusted the curves. Then I played with the color a little bit. I used the measure tool and ran it along the top of the motorhome. I used the rotate canvas arbitrary to straighten the photo. I then cropped the photo, removing the people and the motorhome. I reduced the noise in the photo then sharpened.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

We took this photo at the White Mountains of me and our car. As you can see, it's too dark because it was taken towards the sun a bit too much. Doesn't really look like a nice, bright sunny day, does it.With some adjusting of the levels and some dodging of the darker areas of the image (me, the car and the shadows of these two), I was able to bring out the brightness of that day.